“I didn’t make it yet.”
“What?”
“I will. I just want to be sure. Consider every option.”
“We did that already.”
“My parents have some money. So do yours, right? And I have money from the Army, through Mickey. It would be tough, but I think we could do it.”
“I don’t want Mickey’s money,” Corderoy said. “And my parents are broke. And you know what it would do to our lives. You think you’ll have time to paint?”
“We could figure out sitters or something.”
“You think I’ll have time to study once I go back?”
“Go back where?”
“I mean.” Corderoy chugged the rest of his PBR. “I dropped out,” he said.
“What?”
“But I’m gonna go back. I just need to earn some money—my parents can’t help with tuition anymore.”
“What the fuck! Where do you go every day?”
Corderoy looked down at the bandage on his arm. “I’ve been doing medical studies.”
“That’s your plan?”
“Well, it sucks to be stuck with needles and shit, and the pay is inconsistent, but I could make three hundred dollars a week as a sperm donor. I’m waiting to hear back about my sample.”
“What is wrong with you?”
Corderoy looked like a teenager called on unexpectedly in English class. “Nothing . . . I hope?”
“You didn’t think that was something you should tell me?”
“I didn’t think—”
“Yeah, you didn’t think.” Mani swiped his empty cans off the table and left. Corderoy stood to follow her but stopped himself and thudded back into his seat. There was a way to fix all this. There had to be, he just had to think harder, a lot harder, and maybe drink a few more beers.
• • •
Corderoy stumbled in an hour later after taking a brisk and coatless walk down to the Charles. Mani was standing in the middle of the room, facing the door, like a villain in an action movie. I’ve been expecting you. Prepare to die.
“Maybe it would be,” Corderoy said. “Good, to have it.”
Her face softened. “What makes you say that?”
“Sometimes you just have to jump in the river with your clothes on,” he said.
Mani cocked her head at him.
“You know, when you don’t know what to do. You might as well go big, do something drastic. At least it will be exciting.”
“And then what. Raise it? Adoption?”
Corderoy shrugged. “Do we have to figure that part out now?”
“I should call,” she said. “I’m calling.”
“Sit down,” Corderoy said. And he went over to her bed and patted the mattress next to him. She slumped over and joined him.
“Is that what you want?” he said.
“Fuck,” she said softly, lying back on the bed.
“Fuck,” he said, lying down next to her.
“How can you know?” she said.
“Me?”
“Not you, the general you.”
“So, you.”
“Yes. Me. How can I know if I want to go through with it until I’m going through with it?”
“You can’t, I guess.”
Mani sighed.
“But you can always walk out.”
“Can I?”
“Why not? Talk to the doctor, see how comfortable you are in that room. And if you’re in that chair or whatever and you want to leave, just get up and walk out.”
“I can’t figure out which choice is more exciting,” she said.
“Maybe that means you’re lucky?”
49
* * *
The waiting room at the Planned Parenthood had light blue walls, blue chairs, blue Kleenex boxes. Mani squeezed Corderoy’s hand, hard and rhythmically. Across the room from them were two other women, sitting several seats apart. One looked like a middle-aged career woman in her dressy pantsuit. The other was a teenager who looked bored. Corderoy thought that perhaps it was a defense mechanism, an unwillingness to face the fear and uncertainty of what this room represented.
“Are you okay?” he whispered. “Do you need some water or anything?”
Mani squeezed his hand again. “I’m okay,” she said.
A door opened and a woman said, “Ms. Saheli?”
Mani stood, still holding Corderoy’s hand.
“I’ll be right here,” he said. “Just get up and walk out if you need to.”
Mani nodded and followed the woman in back.
There was a rack of pamphlets on the end table, and Corderoy plucked out the one that said, Thinking about getting a vasectomy?
Apparently he could get one for as little as three hundred dollars. The amount he’d be paid for a donation at the sperm bank. The awkwardness of the donation process had faded in the last week, and Corderoy had found himself getting strangely excited about being a donor. This was due largely to the fact that his waking and his sleeping thoughts had been sucked into the vortex of Mani’s pregnancy, and perhaps partially because, for a sense of balance, one act of destruction suggested an act of creation. And here he was, waiting for Mani to emerge unburdened. So why not donate? He wasn’t perfect, but he had desirable traits. He was even wearing a clean shirt today. They could analyze his handwriting all they wanted; he had nothing to hide. He hadn’t understood earlier why they called it a donation if you were getting paid, but it was clear to him now—it was an act of charity, potentially helping some infertile couple to conceive. It felt good.
The door swung open and the older woman was called in; he had an odd feeling of envy, like he was sitting in coach near enough to first class to catch a glimpse of their luxury when the flight attendant passed through the curtain. Of course, it wasn’t luxury behind that door. Or if it was, it was the luxury of being burdened with weighty moral decisions. He had nothing important to decide. There was nothing he could do that would damn him, nothing that would bless him.
• • •
Mani was led to a small room where she was instructed to remove her clothing and put on a paper slit-backed robe. She felt embarrassed getting naked under the fluorescent light, so she did it quickly, then climbed up on the examination table, feeling her thighs stick to the parchment paper. And she waited. She counted out a minute. Another. She reached for a pamphlet on the counter next to the table and flipped through it. It was a description of the vacuum aspiration procedure.
Once the cervix has been numbed and dilated, a sterile cannula is inserted into the uterus and attached to an electric pump. The pump creates a vacuum which empties the uterine contents.
After the procedure, the tissue removed is examined. Expected contents include the embryo or fetus as well as the decidua, chorionic villi, amniotic fluid, amniotic membrane, and other tissue.
There was a clinical diagram of the cannula being inserted into the uterus. Mani was fixating on it when a woman walked in.
“Hi. I’m Vanessa. I’m the head clinician here.” She was in her late thirties. Her dark brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she wore tortoiseshell glasses. She was on the heavier side, with a roundish face. Mani thought she looked like someone who could bake a great pie.
“You’ve read through the pamphlet, I see,” the clinician said. “Any questions?”
Mani shook her head. Get up and walk out?
“Are you sure?”
Yes, she was sure. She had no questions. “Will it hurt?” she asked.
“There will likely be some uterine cramping,” the clinician said. “But no worse than typical menstrual cramps. We’ll apply a local anesthetic to your cervix, so there won’t be any direct pain from contact with the speculum or dilators.”
“How long does it take?”
&nb
sp; “No more than fifteen minutes. But we ask you to wait in our recovery area for a while afterward.”
Get up and walk out?
“Are you ready to begin?”
Mani nodded.
“Okay, lean back on the table and put your legs in the stirrups.”
Mani lay back and stared at the perforated ceiling while the clinician took the metal speculum and ran it under warm water to heat it up. She tried to conjure the diagram from the pamphlet, but it had become an abstract jumble of colors in her mind.
The clinician turned the water off and began applying grease to the speculum. Get up and walk out? Mani felt the metal slip into her, widen her.
“I’m applying the anesthetic now,” the clinician said. Get up.
“Okay,” Mani said. And something snaked its way into her, past the metal clamps, and stabbed at her soft and untouched inside, piercing until it began tingling outward. Walk out of here.
She was no longer seeing the diagram—it had become a flower, or a dancer, or an explosion. Get up and walk out.
“We’ll give that a minute to take effect,” the clinician said.
“I’m going to dilate your cervix now,” the clinician said. “You’ll feel this a bit, but it shouldn’t hurt.” Walk out.
“Halfway there,” the clinician said. “All we have to do now—”
“I don’t need to know everything,” Mani said. I’m getting up and walking out. Okay?
“Okay, just let me know if you have any concerns.”
And then something hooked its way to her hollow.
Her hollow, which was a mushroom cloud. The pump wheezed to life and Mani got up and walked out as the vacuum collapsed her dimensions, drawing everything in, her center buckling with cramps, a system-wide dry-heaving that moved up through her chest and into her head, where her consciousness imploded.
But she was fine, for she had gotten up and walked out. She wasn’t even here. She was nowhere. There was a black tear in the fabric of the universe and she had slipped through it to a place of uncompromising silence.
“All done,” the clinician said.
• • •
Corderoy sat in the waiting room, tapping his foot, angling his neck to look through the small vertical slit of a window in the door to the back area, as if that would allow him to see Mani. His phone rang. Unknown number.
“Hello,” he said quietly.
“Hi, this is Melissa calling from California Cryobank. I’m calling for Halifax Corderoy.”
“Speaking.”
“Mr. Corderoy, I regret to inform you that your donor application has been declined, as your sample does not meet our needs at present. We thank you for your interest in California Cryobank.”
“What do you mean, does not meet your needs?”
“We do not disclose that information. I apologize.”
“Does that . . .” Shit. Did he have a low sperm count? Poor motility? That couldn’t be it, or he wouldn’t be in Planned Parenthood right now.
“Mr. Corderoy?”
“Hi, sorry. Do I have an STD? I mean, if I did, you’d tell me, right?”
“Yes.”
“I have an STD? What is it?”
“Yes, I would tell you, Mr. Corderoy. You do not.”
“Great.”
“Have a nice day.”
“Thanks.”
So he wasn’t HIV-positive or syphilitic. He was just deficient for completely natural reasons. Good to know.
• • •
When Mani walked back into the waiting room, she looked nauseated and defeated. Corderoy assumed she had gone through with it. It had been almost forty-five minutes. But Did you? didn’t seem like a good question to ask right then. He grabbed Mani’s bag, held the door for her, and they walked out into the cold.
* * *
Mani spent the next few days in bed with a heat pad, both because of the cramps and because of a general spiritual malaise. They hadn’t talked about her experience in the clinic, and they were operating under the tacit agreement that everything was fine, that Mani was completely capable, both physically and emotionally, of helping herself. Corderoy took care of her as if she were an aging matriarch, which meant he excused the helpful things he did as mere acts of convenience; Mani could have gotten her own cup of tea, but if Corderoy was just about to make some for himself anyway, well, it was no trouble to pour a second cup.
Getting it taken care of hadn’t solved anything. Corderoy didn’t want to leave, and Mani didn’t want him to, either, but he thought she did, and she feared he wanted to. It was probably best to air the place out, anyway. So Corderoy started looking for solutions. The most immediate one was liquor. He brought home a handle of Jim Beam. Then he turned to Craigslist. He spent two drunken days looking for jobs, trying not to let it bother him when Mani declined a pour, when she asked how many drinks he’d had that day. He didn’t find a job, but he did find a solution: two thousand dollars for a two-week inpatient sleep study at Mass General Hospital.
He would live in a small windowless room for two weeks, doctors and scientists observing his routines, and when he emerged, well—it would be later, and hopefully he and Mani would have a real talk about everything that needed talking about. He showed her the advertisement.
“It says here you won’t be able to consume any substances. No caffeine, no nicotine, no alcohol.”
“I think I could use a detox anyway,” Corderoy said.
“Maybe that would be best.”
“So I should do it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
If he couldn’t start making his own decisions, he’d drink himself to death. “I think I’ll do it,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Will you miss me?” he said.
She had to start protecting herself. “I don’t know,” she said.
“Let’s find out.”
SLEEP
SUBJECTIVE STUDY RECORD, PARTICIPANT H. CORDEROY
* * *
Day 1 of my captivity.
I counted out a minute, then five, then ten, and then an hour, letting my body get a sense of that time, trying to incorporate the span of a day into the rhythms of my viscera. But there are no windows. The lights are kept dim and steady. White walls. A white bathroom. A white metal door, the hospital kind with the handle lower than you expect. There is no TV, no bookshelf. There is a small desk with a computer, but it only turns on when they activate it from somewhere outside the room. And then it is locked into the testing program. A camera watches me from the upper-right corner. My clothes are in storage. There is no clock.
I entered the room at eight a.m. and have eaten two meals since then. Good, as far as hospital food goes. After each, they had me fill a cup with urine, and after the second, they drew blood. The first meal consisted of a dinner roll, slice of ham, steamed broccoli, hash browns, apple, small milk. The second meal: biscuit, sausage, steamed carrots, mashed potatoes, apple, small milk. I don’t like milk, so I didn’t drink it the first time. I told them not to bring it again, but they did anyway. I tried to save the apple for later; they said I had to eat it now. I’m beginning to suspect they design each meal to contain the same basic ingredients but in varied forms, and that these ingredients are specifically chosen so the meals cannot be identified as breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Hard to complain, though. I’ve lived on ramen and beer for weeks at a time.
I’m reminded of the beginning of Robinson Crusoe’s journal. I must have read that book a dozen times when I was a kid. Something like, September, 1659. I, poor miserable Robinson Crusoe, being shipwrecked in a dreadful storm, came on shore on this dismal island, the rest of the ship’s company drowned. In despair of any relief, I saw nothing but death before me. Only Crusoe’s journal was voluntary—I write because they tell me to write. Though I did volunteer for the st
udy, so I guess that means I’ve shipwrecked myself. Which is kind of what Defoe did in choosing to inhabit that character. Right? Maybe I’m talking out my ass.
* * *
Day 2 of my captivity.
Garret’s voice on the intercom. Test time, Hal. So I get out of bed and sit down at the computer. Today’s test is the same as yesterday’s. They call it the PVT—the psychomotor vigilance task. Basically, the screen is black and every few seconds a small white light flashes in the middle, about the size of an icon. And I have to press the space bar right when it happens. It is so fucking boring. I guess they’re trying to quantify my sleepiness by reaction time or something. Garret calls me to the computer for a ten-to-fifteen-minute session once every hour or two. You’re probably going to read this, aren’t you, Garret?
Garret is kind of a dick—he’s about my age, grad student at MIT, studying computational psychology, which I guess means he’s on his way to some combination of computer programmer and neuroscientist. Garret was the guy I first talked to on the phone. He said they’d be looking at genes linked with circadian rhythms to see if they’re different for early birds and night owls. And to make sure there are no other factors, I had to abstain from all foreign substances. No caffeine, no nicotine, no prescription drugs, no over-the-counter, no “street drugs,” no vitamins. No alcohol. One day and I already feel off balance, chemically vacant.
Last night—already that doesn’t sound right—just before the first sleep time, Garret came in with one of the nurses, and they said it would be lights-out in five minutes—they ordain when to sleep, when to wake, when to shower, when to eat—and so they had to connect me to the EEG. They put on the electrode cap and began poking through it with wooden sticks, scraping the dead skin cells from my scalp and pulling my hair out of the way. Then they squeezed in this weird gel. It’s like having nineteen ticks attached to your scalp, slowly engorging themselves. And they expect me to sleep this way. I wasn’t tired. I wanted to keep reading Endurance. They allowed me a single book and that’s what I brought, figuring it would be appropriate when isolated in a white room. But they wouldn’t let me read. It was lights-out. I lay there with those wires coming out of my head until my body figured out how to shut itself off without the help of booze.
War of the Encyclopaedists Page 37
